TWO DECADES IN, Long Jewelers’ annual Wedding Band Weekend continues to draw a crowd.
More than 1,000 people visit Long’s over three days every March to buy their wedding bands.
“That’s a huge win,” says Craig Rottenberg, president of Boston-based Long’s Jewelers. “What makes this event so special for us is that even though we have six stores, we bring everyone to one store and throw a giant wedding band party,” he says. “It’s a fun event with tremendous energy, food, drink, and decoration. A celebration.”
While couples can celebrate checking off an important item from their to-do list, Long’s can celebrate the fact that most customers who visit Long’s for wedding band weekend are new to the company. Many bought their engagement rings elsewhere.
“We don’t do it just to cater to the folks we sold engagement rings to,” Rottenberg says. “We use it to cement a jewelry relationship with new customers. A lot of engagement ring sellers orphan their customers after the first sale. Our business is the exact opposite of that. We’re just as happy to start with the wedding band or a watch as an engagement ring. It’s all about building a lifelong relationship of trust and value.”
Long’s Jewelers is a family-owned and operated full-service jeweler with six stores throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Long’s transforms the inventory at its largest store (10,000 square feet) into all wedding bands, creating an incredible selection from Long’s suppliers. The Burlington showroom becomes a wedding wonderland, its cases brimming with diamond, gold, platinum, alternative metal, and customizable wedding rings.
“There are thousands and thousands of wedding bands to choose from,” Rottenberg says. “Year in, year out, tastes change a little bit. But the core of the event is the same. Provide an amazing experience, recognize that these are people starting their lives together, and they want to be treated with patience and respect. How we market the event has changed dramatically. It’s almost exclusively digitally driven and social media driven.”
Word has, of course, spread in the market, by word of mouth as well as changing modes of marketing.
Recently, although the Boston market has long favored round diamonds, shoppers are looking for fancy shapes. Yellow gold has come back in a way it hasn’t in years. Even wedding band customers are looking at multiple stacking bands, and women often want more than one. Men like darker metals and mixed metals.
Many men’s bands are more substantial, more precious, more unique, or more of a statement in some way than in the past. On the high end, they can be wearable art. Long’s has had a lot of success and growth with the high-end men’s band category as more move away from traditional gold bands.
To make the event successful, planning never really ends and begins in earnest as far as six months in advance.
“I don’t think this is something you can throw together and have it be a big success,” Rottenberg says. “I think you need to plant the seeds early.”
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March is the designated month because spring and summer are the wedding seasons in New England. “Having the event in March sets them up to have the rings ready for the massive flow of summer weddings,” Rottenberg says.
Partnering with other businesses helps drive success, too. Partners include a restaurant next door and a local men’s clothing company that specializes in tuxedos for wedding parties. Long’s newest partner is Lizzie’s Bakery, named Best of Boston for wedding cakes two years in a row by a local magazine. Throughout the weekend, couples can win prizes, and one couple will also win up to $2,000 to be used toward their wedding bands.
Wedding bands, sometimes overlooked by jewelers as a profit center, are recognized as such by Long’s.
“We’re still seeing people spend tremendously on their wedding bands,” Rottenberg says. “The average ticket is still rising. They want to spend more and more on them.”
